


That Would Be Satisfactory

by DwarvenBeardSpores



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: (briefly) - Freeform, Alexander's Death Wish, Alternate Universe, Banter, Biting, Communication, F/M, Historical Inaccuracy, Long-Distance Relationship, Married Life, Mild Sexual Content, Relationship Negotiation, background war stuff, weight fluctuation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-29
Updated: 2018-08-29
Packaged: 2019-07-04 01:21:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15830835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DwarvenBeardSpores/pseuds/DwarvenBeardSpores
Summary: They finish writing in the dim light of candles burning low, and Angelica feels a thrill every time at the stack of paper, the proof of brand new ideas. Alexander blots the last page and taps the edges of the essay on the table so the papers are perfectly aligned.“I suppose we should head to bed then,” Angelica says one night, like most nights. She can’t imagine sleeping now, while her body is still vibrating with words, but she suggests it anyway. It’s part of the game.“Lead the way,” Alexander says, his hands still twitching around the memory of his pen. His eyes glint in a reflection of hers, a spark that suggests anything but sleep.—The early days of marriage and the war for Alexander and Angelica Hamilton.





	That Would Be Satisfactory

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sarah1281](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sarah1281/gifts).



> Sarah1281 requested a story where Angelica and Alexander are together, but it’s not cheating, unrequited/unresolved attraction, or super angsty. This does include angst, the core is that they love each other, even when that's difficult. Thank you for such an intriguing prompt (I’m always a sucker for Angelica). And again, I appreciate you being so patient with me when Life Stuff made this take way longer than anticipated.
> 
> This story was written for the 2017 Fandom Loves Puerto Rico auction. Thank you so much to everyone who facilitated and participated.

The days right after their marriage are heady, and Angelica loves every moment.

Alexander’s hands are never far from her body, nor hers from his. They kiss before leaving the house and brush hands in the corridors, and Angelica laughs freely, as though everything wrong with the world is bound to pass her by.

She strokes his impeccable calves with her feet when they sit at dinner, pleased that she can draw extra color to his cheeks. She leaves the cook instructions for filling meals and insists that Alexander eat. Taking advantage of his better station in life, and feeding off Angelica’s enthusiasm, he does. Angelica takes a certain pride in watching his clothes hang less loosely and the hungry angles of his body become less severe.

“I think all my money might just be doing you some good,” she teases, pinching the new softness of Alexander’s belly.

He squirms, laughing. “I don’t think it’s money I’ve been eating.”

“Well you may be surprised to learn that the bread and potatoes we’ve been serving every night need to be bought with something,” Angelica teases. “Oh! Maybe you ought to write a pamphlet on it to get the word out.”

“Maybe I wasn’t talking about bread and potatoes,” Alexander counters with a suggestive lift of his eyebrows, and now it’s Angelica’s turn to laugh and squirm delightedly as his hands lift the hem of her skirt.

The two share a chair in Alexander’s study, pressed tightly together as they bend their heads over letters and pamphlets and essays. Alexander used to pause, disbelieving, as Angelica tore the words out of his mouth and made them her own, as she poked holes in his arguments or bolstered his weakest points. Now he’s learned to expect it, and the two spend long nights swapping ideas with an ever more fevered intensity. Alexander’s essays begin to change in form. His ideas touch on women’s political rights, then settle in, then begin to dig deep. One handwriting becomes two on the page as he and Angelica trade off sentences, dance around each other, and correct each others’ words and punctuation.

They finish writing in the dim light of candles burning low, and Angelica feels a thrill every time at the stack of paper, the proof of brand new ideas. Alexander blots the last page and taps the edges of the essay on the table so the papers are perfectly aligned.

“I suppose we should head to bed then,” Angelica says one night, like most nights. “You’re meeting with Lafayette and I told Eliza I’d visit her.” She can’t imagine sleeping now, while her body is still vibrating with words, but she suggests it anyway. It’s part of the game.

“Lead the way,” Alexander says, his hands still twitching around the memory of his pen. His eyes glint in a reflection of hers, a spark that suggests anything but sleep.

“Of course,” Angelica answers. She grins and rests a hand on the back of Alexander’s neck, and he shivers in anticipation. “But you’re not a follower by nature. I hope you’re not making plans to overthrow me.”

“Really. You can’t expect me not to rise up and overturn you.” He grins, cheeky.

“Show me then,” Angelica taunts. “And make it eloquent.”

When Angelica finally falls asleep, hours later, the sharp words on her lips have been replaced by the taste of skin, and there are inky fingerprints on her hips and her breasts.

Alexander wakes first and waits until Angelica is awake too before getting dressed. He knows she wants to see the bruises she bit into his skin. She kisses him good morning on the back of his neck while he shares the thoughts that came to him in dreams, and rubs last night’s tension out of her hands.

Their eyes meet just before Alexander leaves the bedroom and Angelica gets dressed. In these moments Alexander’s eyes seem both bottomless and frantic, as though he knows this routine will either end in change or stagnation because he can’t imagine security, even in domestic life.

_You will never be satisfied,_ Angelica thinks, and she’s not sure if it’s meant towards Alexander or herself. Her own eyes, she’s sure, are a mirror of his, and she, too, knows that their marriage is anything but secure. In a week or a month or a year their passions will cool and domesticity will become an itch under her skin. Angelica will either content herself with a comfort that makes her sick, or blow the whole thing apart.

She smiles and Alexander smiles back and the moment disappears. Angelica thinks _we’ll find a way,_ because the two of them are rewriting their entire world one essay at a time. Surely they can rewrite their marriage the same way, no matter what happens. Even if they can’t, Angelica is stubborn, and she won’t give up Alexander without a fight.

As it turns out, change comes and they don’t have a choice.

The war picks up and, with an eagerness Angelica understands but can’t quite condone, Alexander jumps at the chance to make his difference.

“You’d do the same thing, if you could,” he says, packing papers into his bag. “Do anything and everything to get out from under the oppressive thumb of the British. This is bigger than either of us. And you know that.”

Angelica, her brain swelling with pride, her heart wringing in agony, says, “I do know that. And I know that if it was me I’d be fighting with everything I had. It may not be fair to ask this, but please, _keep yourself alive._ ”

“I’ll write,” he says. _To you, specifically,_ she hears, so she kisses him deeply even though he didn’t promise not to die.

Then he’s gone and she imagines him walking dusty roads and tries to brace herself for the news that he won’t come home. She runs the thought over in her mind _I might never see him again,_ and learns to recover faster and faster from the dizzying drop of despair it throws her down. Alexander has seen so many people die. She knows by the omissions in his run-on words, by the way his hands fidget when certain family titles are said, the way his eyes go dark sometimes during a storm. He has practiced saying _death_ and meaning it. He's needed to. She can do the same.

After all, Alexander is prepared to die, regardless of what Angelica needs. She’s allowed to be selfish enough to practice until he proves her wrong.

Angelica continues writing in his absence, but without his name her words cannot travel as far as they used to. Without his body pressed into her side they come less quickly and Angelica finds herself less satisfied with the result. She does not need him but she misses him, and when she retires to bed alone, she has spent all her words and washed the ink off her fingers.

Eliza comes to visit often, more often than when Alexander had been around. It’s because she’s still in love with him; Angelica can tell from the way she averts her eyes from his face. Eliza knows it’s improper and desperately wishes to stop feeling. Alexander might be in love with her, too. There’s a particular look he gets when he looks at Eliza that Angelica has never seen anywhere else.

When the three are in a room together Angelica’s stomach twists with guilt, because Alexander is the one thing she allows herself to be selfish about. But with Alexander gone, Eliza comes by and reassures her, and together they open letters from the battlefront. Alexander complains about the food and the cold, vaguely alludes to strategy, shares anecdotes of conversations among the soldiers, and professes, as always, his love.

One afternoon, on an impulse, Angelica says, “if he makes advances on you—and I know him, I wouldn’t be surprised—don’t worry about me. I’d rather share both of you than lose even one.” It might be an attempt to repair the last divide between her and her sister, or it might be a desperate bargain with the universe to bring Alexander back safely. Ultimately it doesn’t matter. She means it with all her heart.

Eliza bites her knuckle. “That’s not acceptable,” she says. A blush appears on her cheeks, though, as she thinks about it. “He’s yours, Angelica, by love and by law.”

“I mean it,” Angelica says, and wonders if she should have told Alexander the same thing before he left. _I’ll do it if he gets back,_ she tells herself. _If. When. If._ It’s the sort of thing that can only be shared in person.

Eliza shakes her head and says, “so do I.”

“Think on it, then,” Angelica urges. “Nobody needs to know.”

Eliza changes the subject, and Angelica has to content herself with the knowledge that she made an attempt.

Alexander does come home, many months later, thinner than ever and with a frantic look in his eyes. Angelica throws herself on him before he can get a word out, kissing him with the same desperate hunger they’d shared the night before he left for General Washington’s army. He tastes like smoke and dirt but there, _there,_ she can still draw out the fire between them, like she is the spark and he is the gunpowder. Every muscle in his body is taut but Angelica still feels like he could dissolve right through her fingers.

They pull away and Angelica presses a finger to his lips. “No war talk yet,” she says. “Just enjoy being here.”

Alexander’s face goes through a series of vaguely constipated expressions as he holds his tongue, but he nods and lets Angelica lead him into the house. She sits him at the table and begins talking, words rushing off her tongue as though it was imperative she expressed her own reality before she listened to hers. Because she needs him to know what he’s missed; because she needs him to miss her.

This time it is Angelica’s hands that never leave Alexander’s side, thumbing over his sharp hipbones and pressing into bruises and scars that she did not make. Alexander is skittish, he never quite lets himself get comfortable. _It’s because war puts people on edge_ , Angelica thinks. _That’s all. He’ll settle in soon._

She finally allows him to talk, as the evening sun slips slowly out of sight. They’re sitting in the dusky garden, her seated on a stone bench and him pacing, gesturing, his mouth unable to keep up with his thoughts. His words carry the roll of cannon fire behind them. He tells her about battles won and the bravery of his compatriots, but he is also candid about their failures. The cold nights, the hard ground.

“You should have seen the duel,” he says, and his face lights up in pride. “Burr sided with Lee, of _course,_ because the man has no morals. It was almost funny, us facing off yet again. But of course it was Laurens with the gun— and Lee, but his was practically useless. Hah! Laurens got the shot in just a _heartbeat_ after the tenth pace. You would have been amazed.”

Angelica chews her lip. She’s never seen a duel, only heard of them. Alexander suddenly feels impossibly far away, and on his next pace past she grabs his arm and pulls him onto the bench beside her.

“That’s why you got sent home?” she asks, and it has the intended consequence. Alexander slumps over, his face betraying a deep disappointment and even deeper anger.

“Laurens, Burr, they’re still out there. Lee, nobody cares, but it’s _me_ Washington wants to make an example of. He never let me lead, barely let me fight. I need to get back out there.” He looks up and his eyes are dangerous, like an endless well with nothing but fire at the bottom. She can fall and fall and burn and burn forever, just like he’s doing now. “You understand, Angelica.”

“Every word.” She hates that she does, but the same depth and heat has awoken in her chest. “Why should he pick on you, when you’re not even the one dueling?”

“ _Exactly,_ ” Alexander agrees, but Angelica discovers she isn’t done. Tapping into Alexander’s anger has woken her own, and it turns out she’s very angry after all.

“Why not punish Laruens and Burr the same? They’ve got families to slink home to, don’t they? He ought to let you make your own decisions about how you want to die, about whether or not you abandon you family.”

Alexander’s face contorts from relief to something almost like guilt. “That’s not—"  
  
“It is.” Angelica bites the words out. “I don’t pretend to know what going to war is like, but I know that we’re all fighting back here, staying alive without guns and battle strategy. And I _know_ you, Alexander. I can’t stand how poorly you know yourself.”

She presses a hand to his chest and leans toward his face, as though she’s going to fall into his eyes, as though she’s going to devour him when she opens her mouth. “Will you really be satisfied if you die in the war?”

Alexander meets her eyes, and for a moment they are mirrors of endless depth and passion. Together they are an ouroboros of hunger, endlessly devouring each other and themselves.

Alexander grabs her face and pulls her in for a kiss, and then they are nothing but hands and mouths and skin. Angelica’s hands fist in his hair, his hands settle around her waist and pull her closer.He is sharp and demanding and she loves it, crawls on top of him to make sure he won’t squirm away. They are still in the garden but Angelica doesn’t care. It’s been too long.

When they pull themselves together, night has properly fallen and they can only just see each other in the glow from the house. The air is cool on Angelica’s sweaty skin, and she adjusts and readjusts her skirts before saying, “we should go in.”She can’t imagine sleeping now, with months of pent-up passion just beginning to find release, but she suggests it anyway.

Alexander nods, and then they are silent, heavy, awkward as they lock the door to the garden and prepare themselves for bed. They lie down and, as always, as they haven’t in too long, curl inwards until their foreheads are pressed against each other and their breaths mingle.

Alexander rubs a hand gently over Angelica’s hip. “It will drive me mad to stay here and let the war pass me by,” he says softly.

“It will drive me mad to watch you leave again,” Angelica answers.

Alexander’s jaw grinds as he contemplates that. “If we don’t win—“

“We will. But will you and I be left to enjoy it?”

Alexander breathes into the darkness, and Angelica clasps his hand tightly.

“We will never be satisfied,” she says. “And we’ve always known it. We will always hunger for something better. But if we’re destined to share this hunger, I'd rather do it with you than without.”

“Why wouldn’t I be satisfied to give up everything for this cause?” Alexander asks. “What could be more—”

“Building a country after the war is done?” Angelica asks. “Writing peace the same way you’ve written conflict?” She does not say _loving your wife_ , even though the words linger on her lips, because she knows that he loves her and she also knows that loving her cannot be his whole world. Loving him cannot be hers. “Raising a child?”

Alexander stiffens. “Are you—?” he asks, hope in his voice.

Angelica shakes her head. _No._ “And at this rate I never will be.”

He sighs. Angelica pulls his head closer and combs through his hair. “You’d be amazing,” she says. “At all of it. You can do so much more than die. That’s all I want. Go back to war if you must; I can’t stop you, though I can hate you for it. Just stay here until General Washington calls for you again. Come back when the war is done. _Keep yourself alive._ ”

This time she’s the one that begins a kiss before he can answer. She knows that the answer will be _no,_ will be _I can’t promise that,_ will be an  _I love you_ , said from a great distance, and she doesn’t want to hear it. She kisses him slow and deep as though they have all the time in the world, as though she can gently and completely swallow him whole.

They break apart, and Angelica lies back on the bed, contemplating sleep but vibrating with excitement and despair, the thrill of being back with Alexander. “I haven’t argued a point so well since you left,” she says to the ceiling.

He laughs softly. “I don’t believe that.”

“Everyone else gives up too early.”

“I’ll stay until he calls me back,” Alexander says. “I’m sure he will. I’m invaluable, and we’re short-handed as it is.”

She’s surprised to hear anything so concrete. “Satisfactory,” Angelica answers.

Alexander laughs again. “I’ve missed you.”

They sleep, that night, curled together. Their bodies slot together like they’d never been apart.

He is home for another month. Another month where they return almost to how they were before. Eliza watches Alexander now, though her face is unreadable, and Angelica says nothing, but tells Alexander nothing about her promise either. Not until he’s back for good and needs another reason to stay. For now she wants him all to herself, his hands, his skin, his words, his mind.

The stresses of wartime still weigh on them. Food is scarce, tensions are high, being associated with revolutionaries is a danger in itself. Alexander is restless, desperate to return to the army, and at the same time still shaken by the experience he’s had. About watching men disappear and die, about shooting at the enemy and knowing you might hit someone, and wanting to, and hating it. Still, he answers every knock at the front door with the anticipation of a child, hoping for a summons to go back and make his mark.

When it comes, finally, delivered by a scrawny kid who can’t be more than fourteen, it’s almost a relief.

“You can have so much more than this,” she tells him as he packs up to leave. “Don’t forget.”

“I know,” he says, and holds her tightly before stepping out the door.

—

Another several months of emptiness and then the war ends and he is back in her arms, triumphant. Angelica’s heart swells and she knows that, unstable as their world and their marriage may still be, she will do anything to keep their marriage happy.

“Satisfied?” she asks.

“Never,” he says, and pulls her toward their bedroom. “Are you?”

“Not yet,” she says, but she’s smiling so much she’s crying, and she thinks maybe, just for today, she might be.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I'd love to hear what you thought. 
> 
> I can also be found on tumblr as @dwarven-beard-spores.


End file.
